Opinion

Ash Wednesday was this week, the traditional opening day of six weeks of reflection for Christians. And today an old friend e-mailed a link to a website, rememberthesechildren.org, which lists the names and ages of children killed in the ongoing dispute between the Palestinians and the Israelis. The numbers alone are sobering. Since the first of this year, one Israeli child and 16 Palestinian children have died. Since September of 2000, dead Palestinian children number 671, with 118 Israeli kids dead. We’ll get letters, undoubtedly, pointing out that more children have probably died in Darfur, and in the tsunamis, and the letter writers will perhaps therefore try to minimize the impact of the deaths of the children in Israel. Or perhaps they will try to blame the adults who are associated with the dead children, and accuse them of negligence or of fomenting the strife which produced the deaths, or even of sending children on suicide missions. Such partisan argument misses the point: As long as the rest of us in the rest of the world acquiesce in the death of any child anywhere, we are participating in some way in causing these deaths. And in the words of John Dunne, “any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.” -more-

A Berkeley High School student found with a gun last week on campus was arrested and has been expelled, said district officials, who added that the student’s actions were apparently inadvertent and it did not appear that the student intended to use the weapon. -more-